Thanks to the box office disappointment turned video smash “Blue Collar Comedy
Tour,” Larry the Cable Guy (Dan Whitney to his mother) is a rock star. He’s
doing voices for Pixar movies (next summer’s “Cars”), and he’s making Christmas
albums (last year’s A Very Larry Christmas). There’s just one small
problem: his material is old. In fact, on his newest, The Right to Bare Arms,
Larry’s telling jokes that were written twenty years ago, by other comedians.
For a guy whose catch phrase is “Git ‘er done,” he is clearly okay with letting
someone else git the joke writing done.

“This is gonna be the dumbest show you ever seen in your whole life,” he tells
the audience early on. He was only slightly kidding. For the next 56 minutes,
Larry tells jokes about hookers (several, in fact), pubic hair, gays, blacks
(they have big dicks, apparently), Mexicans, retards, and cripples, with a
healthy dose of “Git ‘er done’s” and “That’s funny, right there, I don’t care
who ya are’s” to prop up a joke when it falls flat, which happens more than
once. This is not to say that you can’t make jokes about any of those people,
groups, creeds, what have you. But it’s difficult to shake the sense of
pandering, that Larry - and let’s go out and say it, Dan Whitney is no more
Larry the Cable Guy than Paul Reubens was Pee Wee Herman or Rodney Dangerfield
was Rodney Dangerfield – knows the fears, prejudices and titillations of the
majority of his audience, and he exploits them shamelessly. In the end, he takes
the easy joke and gets the big laughs, but for all the wrong reasons. In fact,
the most offensive part of his act isn’t the subject matter but the fact that he
just isn’t trying very hard to be funny. It’s like a redneck version of a
“Shrek” movie.

Back to the first point: the material on Bare Arms will be instantly
familiar to anyone who even casually listened to comedy records or watched HBO
comedy specials. His joke about Catholic church (“Boy, you gotta be in shape to
go there! Down, up, sit down, stand up, do a shot, kneel back down, stand up…”)
is straight out of a Jake Johansen routine from 1985. The impression of his
grandfather with a voice box has been done before, and better, by both Bill
Hicks and Denis Leary. (In fact, Leary stole the bit from Hicks as well.) The
bit about different sized condoms (of course, you get the largest one in the
store, then slyly ask for twist ties) was on a Dangerfield HBO special in the
mid ‘80s. These are old, old jokes. Anyone who’s been in comedy as long as Larry
has knows this. Who does he think he’s fooling here?

The times when Larry gets it right is when he sticks with wordplay. The bit
about Hank Williams Jr. High School is good, as are the casual one-liners like
the one about reading an article in the paper (his neighbor got up late). There
is clearly someone who’s fond of subtlety hiding behind that macho posturing
redneck persona. Would it be so difficult to let that character write
most of the new material? It would actually be perfect, because that way he
could do the redneck stuff but still maintain an air of smarts about him.

It’s not that Larry the Cable Guy needs to be the redneck Stephen Hawking in
order to be funny. But he would be well advised to avoid becoming the redneck
Andrew Dice Clay, since we all saw how well that worked out for the Diceman.
The Right to Bare Arms will definitely be humorous to people who don’t
listen to many comedy albums. Like the old NBC slogan, as long as you haven’t
heard it, it’s new to you. But for those who do know comedy, this will feel like
a Dangerfield’s tribute album.

Note: This album does not have a parental advisory sticker on it, but it
probably should. The language isn’t bad, but the innuendo is abundant. If small
children hear this, they will have questions that you simply don’t want to
answer.